Thursday, July 9, 2009
Introduction
How it works?
Generally, viral marketing describes any marketing strategy that use pre-existing social networks that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure, brand awareness and influence. The effect of self-replicating viral processes of viral marketing is similar to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. With viral marketing, it has become much easier for marketers to get big fast.
Certain viral marketing campaigns which are worth mentioning include Microsoft?s Origami Project campaign, Carlton Draught?s Big Ad campaign, Gmail, Ford Motor Company?s Evil Twin campaign, Heinz?s Ketchup Against Tomato Cruelty campaign, Jamie Kane?s BBC sponsored online game, etc.
Benefits of Viral Marketing
In a nutshell, the basic concept of viral marketing is that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. The content can be certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with is associated with a company/site brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company/site or its product. The main benefits of viral marketing are the followings:
- Immediate effect.
The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site in a short period of time. - Viral Marketing is inexpensive to setup.
A well-planned viral marketing is relatively easy and cheap to setup. It primarily involves some investment of time for planning, developing and promoting your content. - It is something fresh and interesting
A good marketing plan is something that gets people’s attention. Viral marketing offers something that it is refreshing as compared to mass marketing and advertising. - Good linkbait.
A good viral marketing content is also a good linkbait content. Viral marketing’s tactics focuses on both content and links by promoting unique content that propagates virally through social news, blogs and network sites is also common tactics for linkbaiting.
Make your own viral marketing
Now you know what is viral marketing and the benefits of viral marketing, it is time to make your own viral marketing content. Here are some dummy’s guides on how to start your own viral marketing today.
- Be Creative
Unleash your creativity to create content that is appeal to the mass audience. It is said that the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of. - Do something out of the ordinary
Users love that you have the resources and guts to do things that are out of the ordinary because this is what takes for the best viral marketing campaigns. - Create something controversial
There is no question that a bold marketing strategy for viral marketing is to create something that is controversial. Something that everyone would loke to talk about. That’s what is needed to power a viral marketing campaign. However, there is always risky side to it. Finding a good balance is something that requires years of experience. - Offer something that is free
There are a number of mistakes that are often made when establishing a business plan that includes viral marketing. The classic mistake is to charge a fee for service when the benefits are not easily identified. In order to create hype or buzz for your marketing plan, it relies on large user base. The best way of doing so is to offer something that is free. Profit should only be introduced once the product has established a large user base, and the fee should be attached to added features and not the basic product. - It is all about sharing, downloading and embedding
In order for something to succeed virally, sharing/downloading/embedding is the most important component. In other words, you should able to provide the followings to your readers:- Downloadable content. This is applicable to pictures, videos, ebooks, widgets, icons etc.
- Sharable content. Provide links where users can send and share easily with friends.
- Embeddable content. Allowing your users to be easily embed the content on their own sites.
- Submit content to social networking sites. Allowing your content to be easily submit it to varies social networks - Digg, Reddit, Netscape, del.icio.us, facebook etc.
- Offer an incentive
Viral marketing works best when a valuable and tangible incentive is offered, encouraging individuals to forward an email message to their friends. One good example of an incentive is by offering an incentive of like 20 percent off referrers’ next purchase or coupon if they forward the message to five friends. - Create a parody
A parody is a subviral marketing technique. It involves creating parodies or tangential take offs of a famous viral marketing campaign and distributing them over the Internet to create a buzz regarding your product/service. Parody thrives on the creation of spoofs or irreverent takes on one’s brand that is already established out there. (Example of creative parodies are : Apple Switch Parody, Apple PC vs MAC, and many more.) - Create sequel
If you have a viral marketing campaign that is very successful, then you should leverage on that and create a sequel viral marketing campaign. When you got people’s attention then you need to act, and one the best ways of doing that is to give them more. Sequels are your best options. (Example of sequels are : sequel to movies, sequel to TV ads, and many more)
I guess that is all the Guide that you need to know about viral marketing. If you have any comments, please share them with me.